


She is Happy

by HappyHoloLady



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Adopted Children, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyHoloLady/pseuds/HappyHoloLady
Summary: When Bella's parents die, she is adopted by two men named Dan Howell and Phil Lester.  She learns to have a family with them and embrace the person she really is.





	She is Happy

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like this! I love Outsider POV so much, so I figured why not try and write a story using Outsider POV. Please note that even though the story takes place in the UK, I live in America so some things might not be accurate.

She scared and angry and feels so many emotions that it's hard to keep up. Her hands are in loose fists at her sides and she can't help but think about the future she suddenly won't have. She can't help but think about all of the dreams that she will never get to make reality, from the small to the large.

She will never be able to do most of the things she wanted to do in her lifetime, because her parents are dead and she is positive that no one will want to bring her into their home. Why would they, when they can simply continue on with their lives or adopt a child who is young, a child that they can watch grow up?

She has spent years and years thinking about how flawed she is and all of the flaws she has noticed over time come rushing back to her, flooding into her mind.

Her eyes aren't very good-looking. Her nose is too big. Her cheeks are too small and her jawline is too sharp. Her hands are large and she has wide arms. She has ugly legs and and bushy eyebrows. There's no reason that anyone would want to adopt her. There are so many more kids that are better and better looking. There's no reason anyone would want to choose her over all of those children.

Her parents died in a car accident, leaving her with nothing but sadness and an empty heart. She doesn't know what will happen next now that she has nowhere to go and no living relatives. The adults are all looking at her with eyes that are filled with fake sympathy and she hates it.

She never got to tell her parents about the first girl that she kissed and the fact that it was wonderful beyond comparison. She never got to tell her parents to abandon their dreams of her settling down with a husband. She never got to tell her parents any of that and now they're gone. She wants to cry now more than she did at the funeral because the world is so large and unfamiliar that she doesn't know what to do.

 

Her fears are proven wrong quickly, though, because she is told that someone wants to adopt her. She has horrible fears of an evil person that wants to hurt her, but when she walks in to meet her new parent for the first time, she finds herself facing two people with big smiles.

She is confused at first, since she was told there would only be one person, but she lets herself observe both people for a moment before saying anything.

They're both huge. She doesn't know how tall they are, but she is 5 feet and 7 inches and has always stood taller than her classmates, yet they tower over her. They both have friendly eyes but she suspects it might be a ruse. One of them has curly brown hair and the other has black hair that is swept up into a quiff.

They look friendly enough, like people she would want to befriend, but she has to remember that she hasn't talked to them yet. She still doesn't even know why there are two of them. She was told she was only getting adopted by one man.

“Bella, right?” the black-haired one asks. She nods warily, waiting for an explanation or a handshake, but instead she is pulled into a hug.

She has hugged many people before and knows the difference between a good hug and a bad hug, so she is startled by the fact that this man gives such good hugs. His arms are soft but around her tightly, yet he is not squeezing. She sinks into his hug for a moment. It is the first hug she has accepted since the death of her parents and it calms her down for a moment.

He doesn't pull away until she does and then he smiles down at her. His eyes are blue and his eyebrows are ginger, which doesn't make sense in her mind until she realizes that he probably dyes his hair.

“I'm Phil,” he introduces, smiling at her. She can't help but smile back before turning to look at the other person.

“I'm Dan,” the brown-haired one says to her, waving a little. He's smiling as much as Phil and she doesn't know what is going on or who they are but she finds that she doesn't dislike the idea of living with them.

They sit down and everything is silent for a moment since neither of them have any idea what to say to each other. She doesn't know what to say to people who could possibly be her future parents, and they clearly don't know what to say to her.

After a few uncomfortable moments, she decides that she doesn't like waiting for them to say something, so she says something.

“How come there are two of you?” she asks them. “The lady told me that only one person would be adopting me.”

They both freeze for a moment at the use of the word adoption, but soon enough they answer the question.

“Actually, it's legally only Phil that's adopting you,” Dan explained. “But since we live together, you're going to be seeing me a lot too.”

She nods, and they are silent for a moment before Phil speaks up.

“I'm sorry, by the way,” he says. Upon seeing her confused expression, he continues. “I heard about your parents, and I'm sorry.”

She expects to be angry and upset about yet another adult telling her how bad they feel for her, as though she is their daily good deed. Yet, she looks up at Phil and feels nothing but a dull sense of reassurance.

Once again, she finds that the idea of going home with these two doesn't make her upset. They have friendly eyes and happy smiles and she hopes and prays that this isn't an act. Logically, she knows that this is too perfect, but she finds herself hoping.

“Okay, I have a question,” Dan asks her.

“Shoot,” she responds, hoping it will be a question she's okay with answering.

“Is that a Fall Out Boy shirt?”

She immediately looks down at her shirt and becomes aware that she is in fact wearing one.

“I like their music,” she says in response, internally holding her breath. She hopes they won't make fun of her interests.

But instead, they both smile and Dan tells her, “Wait until you hear about the times we've met them.”

“You've what?” she asks, incredulous.

They both nod and Dan looks like he's about to go into a story, but he's cut off by a look from Phil.

“We should talk about more important things right now. We can talk about Fall Out Boy later,” Phil reasons. Dan nods, but she isn't willing to let this go.

“If you don't think Fall Out Boy is important, then I can't be associated with you,” she responds and Dan laughs.

“Well then, Phil, we should tell the story,” he says with amusement in his voice. Phil looks amused as well, but it doesn't seem like he's making fun of her. It seems more like they're all laughing with each other.

By the time the Fall Out Boy story is over, they've segued into stories about the times they met other famous people such as One Direction and Ariana Grande. Her jaw practically drops at the amount of subscribers they both have and the list of their accomplishments. She didn't think that she would end up being adopted by famous people.

By now, she's decided that she likes these people enough to want to live with them, and she hopes they like her too.

“Are you two dating, by the way?” she asks them once they're finished the story about how they met Nick Jonas and Dan got called his buddy.

They both exchange a look that's filled with too many emotions for her to read it clearly before turning back to her to respond.

“No, we're not,” Phil says. “We're just best friends.”

  


Within an hour of moving in, she finds out that the whole 'just best friends' thing is utter bullshit. There is no way in hell those two are 'just best friends.'

The first thing they do is show her the room in which she'll be sleeping. The room was apparently Phil's before and she places down her belongings onto the bed that's there for her. The room is larger than she expected, larger than her old room and it's nice. But she can't shake the feeling that she's a foreigner that's barging in to their home. She doesn't voice her concerns.

They're about to go show her the rest of the apartment, when she realizes how hungry she is. She hasn't eaten anything except the toast she had for breakfast, which was 5 hours ago. A light blush colors her cheeks as her stomach emits a growl.

“First, let's have food,” Dan says. Phil nods and she follows them into the kitchen.

“Pasta?” Phil proposes as he walks over to the cabinets. Both her and Dan nod. Dan walks over to Phil and takes out a pot.

She is amazed by what she sees. Dan walks over and grabs pasta as Phil starts to get water boiling on the pot. Phil grabs tomato sauce and Dan grabs plates. Once the water is done boiling, Dan adds the pasta as Phil grabs the silverware. Phil goes to check on the pasta and Dan hands him a cup. Phil nods his thanks before filling it with water and placing it next to his plate. Dan fills up the other two cups with water and Phil puts the pasta on the plates and covers them in tomato sauce. They both pick up the plates and the cups and carry them to the table before sitting down.

Her parents were married for 10 years, yet they could not have done what Dan and Phil just did. If both her parents tried to make food together it would be loud and messy and disastrous. Yet, those two 'just best friends' made three servings of pasta without saying a word. It was like a coordinated dance and she is left in awe.

She sits down at the table and digs into the pasta. “This is good,” she tells them. They both smile at her.

“It's a good thing we can cook, since we can't bake for shit,” Dan tells her with a smile. She has noticed that these two do a lot of smiling, but she doesn't comment on it.

“I'm sure you can't be that bad at baking,” she tells them, shoveling more pasta into her mouth.

They exchange a look that she can't read before Phil says, “Dan's actually been roasted by Gordon Ramsey three times.”

“What?!” she exclaimed. They launch into a story right away and just like the cooking, they do this in perfect harmony. They build the story off of each other, making jokes at the right moments and embedding their voices with emotion. They make each other laugh and occasionally exchange fond smiles.

She watches them tell the story, listening as well as looking. She can tell there's a history between these two and it makes her smile.

“Enough about us,” Phil says once the story is finished. Both Dan and Phil are grinning and everyone is done with their pasta but no one is getting up to put their plates in the sink. “Tell us about you.”

She shrugs. Compared to her new dads ( _Wow,_ she thinks. _They're actually my dads. That's weird._ ) she's fairly boring. She hasn't had a very interesting life. The most interesting thing she can think of about herself is the fact that she's a lesbian, but she can't exactly tell them that.

“I'm boring compared to you,” she laughs. “I don't exactly have a few million people following me on social media.”

“What's your favorite subject in school?” Dan asks her. 

Her response is immediate, since it's an easy question. “Writing.”

Dan nods. “My handwriting is shit, so I didn't exactly have fun with writing, but that's cool.”

She doesn't say about how much she wants to become a screenplay writer when she grows up, or how badly she wants to major in writing when she goes to college. Her parents didn't like those dreams, so she doesn't expect Dan and Phil to. When Phil asks whether she wants to become an author when she grows up, she shrugs, avoiding the question.

“Who's your favorite celebrity?” Phil asks her. She smiles at the clear effort they're making to get to know her.

“I mean, it used to be Brendan Urie, but now I think I'm obligated to say you two,” she says, smiling at them. They all laugh, and her heart is so full of happy emotions she thinks it might burst.

“What about you?” she questions.

“Mine is AmazingPhil,” Dan jokes. She can only assume that he's talking about the black-haired man next to him, and the two of them exchange a look. She can practically feel the affection radiating off of them.

She also happens to notice that Dan's hand is on top of Phil's casually, as though it belongs there. She doesn't comment on it.

They continue talking, sharing stories and jokes and she doesn't understand half of the things Dan and Phil say because they have _so many_ inside jokes. But she doesn't mind. How could she, when they keep smiling and it keeps making her smile. She hasn't smiled this much in ages.

They clear up their plates and she insists on washing hers even though they offer to do it for her. After all, she's the one barging into their house, so the least she can do is clean up after herself.

They decide its a good idea to finish the tour of the house, but after she yawns they decide the tour can be finished tomorrow.

She walks up to the bedroom that they've given her to sleep in before turning around to look at them.

“Where are you going to sleep?” she asks, because she's just realized that she doesn't know where they will be.

Dan points down the hall to another bedroom. “We'll be there.”

“Together?”

“Yeah.”

She raises an eyebrow quizzically because people who are 'just best friends' don't usually share a bed but they brush it off.

“We've slept in the same bed loads of times before,” Phil explains. “We've done it on tour and when we're traveling, so it's no big deal.” She nods, even though her suspicions are now more heightened than they were before. They talk about sharing a bed as though it's perfectly normal.

As she sinks into the bed, she smiles. She smiles at the fact that she's found a new home, and that Dan and Phil seem to be some of the nicest people she's ever met. She smiles at the fact that she feels safe, even though a part of her mind is reminding her that they could easily kick her out if they find out her secret. She smiles because she has never smiled this much in ages. Even though her heart still aches for her parents and the place and people she called home, she can't help but smile at the way everything is going for her.

 _Just best friends my ass,_ she thinks as she closes her eyes and falls asleep.

  


She soon finds herself looking up the two new people in her life on the Internet. They're lives are fairly public for the world to see and once she's done being in awe of their accomplishments, she spends hours upon hours researching everything there is to know about them.

She finds out that they support gay rights and feminism. She learns that they have changed the lives of so many people. She learns that they are infamous for being attached at the hip. She learns about the BONCAs and #dick. She spends ages on Tumblr and Twitter, looking at their fans. She wants to know whether she can trust the two people that are suddenly in her life and she ends up figuring out that she can.

Or at least, she thinks she can. Everything that she's found proves to her that she can, but it could be all an act.

But then she watches their videos. She learns that Dan is bisexual and has struggled with depression and Phil was bullied as a kid. She learns about how they met and the fact that they've lived together for years, which explains the fact that they have so many inside jokes. She learns everything she can about them by stalking fan pages and going through their social media pages. Their videos are so similar to their personalities in real life. By the time she's done her internet stalking, her phone's feed is showing her nothing but Dan and Phil stuff and she's decided that it probably isn't all a lie. She's decided that they probably are the same people that they seem to be on the internet.

Of course, it doesn't make coming out any easier, but she has a muted sense of relief at the fact that there's little chance of them kicking her out for her sexuality. She flops onto the bed and sighs. She can hear them recording in the gaming room and she wants to take a nap but they're really loud. Instead, she just listens to their voices and lets her mind wander. She feels happy.

 

Sometimes when she's looking at Dan and Phil, she feels like barfing at how sweet they are. When they wake up they are slightly groggy and hold onto each other like anchors. They circle around each other like planets and are practically telepathic. Whenever they make food together that they actually know how make (she's watched their baking videos and has concluded that they can't bake at all) it's like watching a machine. Sometimes it's easy to forget that they're two separate people when they seem like two halves of a whole so often.

What's even sweeter is how often they make a conscious effort to include her. She knows that it probably shouldn't make her as happy as it does, but her parents never did that. As much as she loved them, they never went out of their way to make sure she felt like she was a part of something.

Dan and Phil go out of their way to buy extra controllers for game consoles and they play board games almost every other night. Sometimes they explain their inside jokes when she finds one particularly odd, but she normally leaves the inside jokes alone. She doesn't want them to feel pressured to explain the inside jokes.

When Dan leans over to ask Phil's opinion, he always make sure to ask hers as well. When Phil wants to show Dan something he found funny, he makes sure to show her too.

She feels oddly included in everything that they do, which is strange considering she's barged in on them. Her mind makes sure to take the time to remind her that she is nothing but a burden to them, but after a family game of Monopoly her mind is quieted.

She hardly notices that she is subconsciously calling Dan and Phil her family. She doesn't know what role they would be to her in a family, but they are her family and there is no disputing that. They order food way too often and sometimes they don't go outside at all, but they are a family.

Even though she still misses her parents, she has found a family and she feels happy.

  


Her happiness is fleeting. When school starts she feels like she is ready for it. She feels as though she is ready to be a student in a new school. She has found happiness in this new home. She can find happiness in this new school as well.

She quickly learns she cannot. No one says anything bad to her, but people here use gay as an insult and there are slurs thrown everywhere. White people say the n-slur and cis people say the t-slur and all of it makes her unhappy. Her teachers turn a blind eye even though this school says that they are tolerant and advocate for equality.

She comes home upset and emotionally exhausted and goes straight to her room, ignoring Dan and Phil as they welcome her back. She sits on the bed and doesn't feel okay, but she doesn't feel like crying either. The weight of her secret is pulling her down more than ever and there's a lump in her throat. She cradles a stuffed bear she has as though hugging it will solve all of her problems.

It is Phil who comes up after her. He knocks gently on the door to her room before entering, looking at her as she hugs the bear.

“Is everything okay?” he asks in a soft voice. He sounds like he's talking to an injured puppy and even though she would normally feel calmed at that voice, it irritates her now.

“I'm fine!” she snaps at him. She quickly tenses. Her dad would have slapped her and yelled at her about tone of voice. She holds the bear a little tighter, ready to apologize to Phil, when he walks over. She flinches a tiny bit, squeezing the bear so hard it might break.

He pulls her into a hug. He still gives really good hugs and once she is done being shocked she hugs him back.

“In case you're wondering, I'm not doing this because I don't think you're fine. I just like your hugs,” he says as he's hugging her. It's silly and sweet and most of the bad feelings evaporate.

“Okay,” she says, hugging him back. She feels more tired than before and wants to sleep right then and there but waits until the hug is over. Like always, he doesn't pull away first. He simply hugs her until she is ready to pull away.

Once they're done hugging, she lays on her bed and closes her eyes. She hears Phil exit the room but doesn't say anything.

When dinner comes, neither of them mention what happened before, but she notices that they've bought Chinese takeout from the restaurant she really likes and that they've gotten her lemon cupcakes with buttercream frosting because she once mentioned that they bring back happy memories for her.

They joke and talk avidly throughout dinner and don't mention her day or the fact that she isn't saying much. They move from topic to topic, talking about memes and videos they plan to film and the liveshow they want to do soon. When they start talking about anime she can't help but make a joke about Attack on Titan and they both look a little surprised but mask it quickly and laugh.

As they get up to put away their plates, she pulls them both into a hug and they comply, putting their arms around her wordlessly. The hug is awkward since they're all hugging and both of them are so much taller than her, but it is also perfect.

She feels safe and happy and better now that she is in the arms of people who care about her. She smiles and knows that they are smiling too.

 

She is accidentally introduced to their fans one day as they are doing a liveshow. Afterwards, she will apologize endlessly as they assure it her it was their fault for not telling her they were going to go live.

She heard them talking in the lounge and walks in excitedly, already telling them about her 100 on her writing assignment. When she sees them with wide-eyes holding a laptop that is open to YouNow with so many people watching, her heart briefly stops. Dan looks frozen and Phil looks frazzled and she feels like a disappointment.

But Dan immediately says, “Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag.” He turns to the laptop and addresses the viewers. “Everyone, meet Bella, our daughter.” He motions for her to sit down as Phil says. “Technically, she's legally only my daughter.”

They explain how they wanted to expand their family and thought that adoption would be the best way to do it. They talk about how much they enjoy living with someone else in the house. They talk about how it was an adjustment, but they like it.

She stays quiet for most of this until Dan reads, “Stormy8 says 'Question for Bella: What's it like living with dnp?'”

She could talk about how much they have changed her life. She could talk about how included she feels around them. She could talk about how coming home to them is what she looks forward to and how they always know what to do when she is sad. She could talk about the fact that they give really good hugs or the fact that they care about her and each other so much. She could talk about how kind they are and how easily they make her smile. She could tell everyone that sometimes, when she feels truly alone at school, she sneaks away to the bathroom with her phone and a pair of headphones and watches their videos to remind herself that people do care for her.

Instead, she says, “Loud.” She relishes in the laughs of Dan and Phil as they argue about who is more of an inconvenience to live with. The argument is ended by them asking her.

“Bella, who's more annoying to live with, me or Phil?” Dan asks. She pauses and pretends to think before saying, “Neither. You're both equally awful.”

They all laugh and she feels happy.

  


At lunch the next day, a girl from her English class – Jenna – sits next to her. The girl has brown hair in a fringe and it's dyed with purple and blue streaks. Her shirt says “The Only Guns That Should Be Allowed Are Finger Guns” with the American flag colors on it.

“So, you're Dan and Phil's daughter, huh?” Jenna asks. She sighs internally. She hoped this would be someone she could befriend but this girl just wants to get close to her to get close to Dan and Phil. She nods.

“That's cool. My cousin likes them. More importantly, how on earth do you have a 100 in English?”

“The class isn't too hard.”

“Yeah, but Briggs is a bitch.”

She laughs, a small laugh. “Yes, but as long as you do well on the tests he'll give you good scores on the essays.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god, I have been doing everything wrong. Thank you for opening my eyes.”

Later that day, she goes home and tells Dan and Phil about the funny girl she eats lunch with and they congratulate her and ask endless questions. She finally feels like she has somewhat of a place both in her home and in her school. But, she still can't shake the awful feeling that she is lying to them all. They don't know about her sexuality. She wants to tell everyone, but she's scared.

But her loud thoughts are silenced when Dan and Phil laugh over a funny story and she can't stop herself from smiling. Even if she is lying to them, she feels happy.

  


She needs art supplies for a project. She knows that Dan and Phil won't mind at all, but she's never asked them for anything and can't help but feel like she is intruding on them by asking for something. She brings it up at dinner, stabbing her tofu uselessly.

“I have an art project,” she tells them, not meeting their eyes. Part of her still expects them to ask why they should care, even after all of this time. It's what her parents would have said to her if she brought it up like this.

But they nod and Dan asks her, “What do you have to do?”

She stabs at her tofu once again, avoiding the gaze of her two dads. (It's still always weird to think that Dan and Phil are my parents. Most of the time they just seem like fatherly roommates, she thinks.) “I have to draw the person I care about most in the world with charcoal.”

If she had been telling her parents this, she would have gotten a grunt of acknowledgment at best. But Dan and Phil turn to her and she can see the interest in their eyes.

“Do you have charcoal?” Phil asks. _Of course he makes sure I have the materials,_ she thought. She shook her head, still stabbing the tofu.

“Then let's go tomorrow to get them,” Dan suggests brightly. She looks up in surprise because she did not expect this. In her mind, the best possible outcome is if they let her get the supplies if she did chores. She is reminded once again that this home is so different from her old one and she nods with a smile before finally eating that mutilated piece of tofu.

They go to the store the next morning. They all wake up much earlier than normal and make their way to the shop. On the way, they are stopped by a fan, who excitedly tells them how happy she is to meet them. Before the fan leaves, she asks Bella whether Dan and Phil are dating and Bella simply shrugs.

“I've never asked,”she says in response and the fan looks slightly disappointed but Bella doesn't feel much remorse.

She follows Dan and Phil through London on their way to a crafts store and she stares at every unfamiliar thing. It looks like normal London, but she's seeing new things and it makes her heart flutter with joy.

When they enter the shop, she is immediately overwhelmed. She sees so many choices and doesn't know what to choose and decides it's probably best to find the cheapest ones so that she's not too much of a bother.

But as she picks up the cheapest ones she can find, knowing fully that they won't be very good, Dan hands her a pack of fairly expensive ones. She gapes at him, waiting for an explanation as to why she is being told to buy charcoal that is far too overpriced.

“The internet said that these ones were the best, so you should get these,” Dan tells her, pushing the pack into her hands.

“But isn't it too much money,” she asks, still staring at the price tag. She knows the average price of charcoal and this is above that.

But Dan smiles and pats her back lovingly. “You deserve the best ones.”

A week later, she comes home with her art project. Her art teacher protested at first and she lost points, but she doesn't care. She hands her dads a charcoal picture of Dan and Phil, embedded with love.

Her art teacher had told her that she is supposed to make her favorite person in the world, not her favorite people, but she argues that Dan and Phil are inseparable. She has lost points on the project, but she doesn't care.

She doesn't know when her birth parents stopped being what she thought of when she heard the word family. She's not sure when family became the awkward yet perfect mix of her and two 6 foot tall YouTubers who she is sure are dating.

She's not sure when it happened, but as Dan and Phil debate over where to hang up the picture, as though it is obvious that the picture needs to be hung up, she feels happy.

  


She feels guilty. She feels like she's been hiding a massive secret from everyone that she's interacted with and she feels bad about it. Her heart is sad and so is she. She wants to come out so badly. She wants to tell her family and tell Jenna – who recently came out as pansexual.

She's just scared. Dan and Phil have noticed that she isn't talking as much. She isn't making as many jokes and is spending more time in solitude.

Jenna has noticed too, the way she eats quickly before excusing herself to go to the library and buries herself in LGBTQ+ fiction. Jenna has probably noticed that they don't text as much anymore and that Bella doesn't say much in class.

She feels like she's lying to them all. She feels dishonest and bad for keeping a secret. She feels like she is doing bad.

The voice of reason in her mind tells her that she isn't being dishonest and she shouldn't feel guilty, but she does. She's almost positive that Dan and Phil will accept her and she knows that Jenna will.

She feels bad for keeping this secret even though she knows it's not a bad thing.

But, she thinks she can live with it. Until, she overhears Dan having a conversation with a friend of his.

She is standing outside their room, about to tell him about a funny story from science, when she hears him talking.

“I don't know what to do, Louise,” he says into the phone. She pauses and listens intently, her heartbeat accelerating.

“She's clearly keeping a secret and I want to know what's going on but I don't want to pressure her. I'm just nervous that it's something bad. Oh God Louise, what if she hates us? What if she's suicidal or something? I don't want to force it out of her but I don't want her to suffer silently.” There is a pause before he finally says something.

“Alright, Lou. I'll try that,” he tells her with a sigh.

She walks away from the room door, her mind going fast with possibilities and ways to phrase the message she wants to tell.

She feels nervous.

 

It is dinner, and she has practiced this speech over and over again for the past hour. She still has an essay she needs to finish, but she has decided this takes importance.

It is Dan who speaks first, “Bella, if you ever want to tell us anything, we're always open to listen to you. I promise we'll do our best to support you if you're struggling.”

This is not part of the plan. Part of her wants to activate the flight part of her fight or flight instinct and try again later.

But there is a bigger part of her that sees the way Dan and Phil are looking at her. They care about her and she is tired of keeping secrets.

“I do have something to say,” she tells them, putting down her slice of pizza. She looks into their eyes, staring at the pools of concern and wonder.

She wants to flee, to forget she ever said anything. Instead, she says it.

“I'm a lesbian.”

She doesn't think the world could move any slower than it does as she is waiting for their reactions. She is prepared for them to scream or tell her she is too young to know.

But instead, they both smile and look at each other. Their gazes hold something she cannot place. They both turn to her and suddenly, Dan and Phil have both engulfed her in their arms. It is a perfect hug, the way all of their hugs are perfect.

“I'm so proud of you,” Dan tells her, holding onto her firmly. Neither of them are squeezing her, but they are embracing her firmly enough that she knows they are there. They feel like anchors when she was previously lost at sea.

Phil tucks a curl of her hair behind her ear and smiles at her again. They both look so proud of her and it is making her feel warm inside.

Suddenly, she is crying.

They are asking what is wrong and she only manages to sputter out a broken sentence of thanks before the happy tears are flooding her eyes again. They go back to hugging her, letting her sob into their arms.

She feels like she is part of a family. She feels happy.

 

She comes out to Jenna at lunch. Jenna has been asking for her muffin all day and is still bothering her about it when she decides to come out.

“Jenna, I have something to say,” Bella says. “I'm a lesbian.”

The words are out her mouth far too quickly considering how important this moment is to her. She doesn't want to lose the only friend she has because of her identity. Her heart is accelerating and she knows her fears are stupid but she can't help but be scared.

“Cool. I fully support you. Can I have your muffin now?” Jenna responds.

Later, they will joke about how Bella had a worse reaction to coming out to Jenna than Jenna did. Jenna immediately finds herself under fire of dozens of questions about whether she knew or whether this changes anything.

By the end, Bella is happy because she has been accepted and Jenna is happy because she finally got the muffin.

 

She finds out their secret one day when she comes home early. It was a half-day, and she finds them on their bed.

She enters their house sneakily, ready to surprise her family. She is holding a box of sweets that she bought on her way home with the money they had given her for lunch. She wants to give it to them to express her thanks for accepting her.

She pads silently through the halls of the home, looking for Dan and Phil. She finally makes her way up the stairs, listening for noises to indicate where they are.

She hears shuffling withing their bedroom and doesn't think before she opens it.

Sitting there are Dan and Phil, kissing each other with their hands interlocked. It is a sweet and loving scene, but it stopped abruptly when Dan notices her.

“Oh- Bella,” he says. He stops kissing Phil. They both look like deer caught in headlights and they struggle to form words but she doesn't let them.

“We got let out early,” she explains. She crosses the room to sit on the bed next to them. “I brought you sweets.” She holds out the box, making no mention of the scene she just witnessed. They can talk to her when they feel ready to. For now, laughing while eating sweets is good enough.

They talk to her later. She is sitting in the lounge, typing out a paragraph for class. They come up to her, holding hands.

“We need to talk,” Phil says to her as he sits down. Dan is sitting next to him. She nods, closing and saving her file.

“Dan and I are dating. We have been for a while, before you came into our lives. We hope this doesn't change anything.”

She just nods before giving a full response. “It doesn't change anything. Thanks for telling me.”

She opens up her file again and although no one is saying anything, they are all happy.

  


She is studying. She has a big test coming up and she needs to finish reviewing all of the material. She has spent hours in this room, staring at documents and trying to remember things she learned months ago. She feels drained and upset. She wants to cry and sleep at the same time.

But there is a quiet knock on her door and Phil walks in, holding a plate of marshmallows and cookies. He places it down and gives her a quick hug. His arms are loose this time so that she can easily refuse the hug if she wants.

They hug for a moment and he makes his way out of the room (not before stealing a marshmallow from the plate) and she is left smiling and buzzing with energy.

Her mother and father's pictures are no longer on the desk as they used to be. They have found a home on the wall. In their place is a picture of her, Dan, and Phil. They are underneath a big oak tree in a park and their faces are ablaze with happiness. The picture brings back positive memories in a way that the picture of her parents was never able to.

She leans over her desk, studying the words intently as she takes a bite out of a cookie from the plate.

She is happy. 


End file.
